1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an input key to which a plurality of input information elements are assigned, and an input apparatus for inputting information by the input key.
2. Related Background Art
A portable terminal such as a cell phone needs to be compact enough for a user to carry. For this reason, where a cell phone is provided with a keyboard, the number of input keys in the keyboard is often much smaller than that in a so-called full keyboard.
In the portable terminals, therefore, it is common practice to assign an input key a plurality of symbols and designate a symbol to be inputted, by the number of pushes on one input key. For example, one push on a key results in inputting “” in Japanese, and two pushes result in inputting “” in Japanese.
By adopting the technique of this type, it is feasible to input numerous symbols, such as Japanese hiragana writing symbols and katakana writing symbols, even in electronics equipment with the small number of input keys like the portable terminals.
However, this conventional technique required two or more pushes on an input key for input of a symbol and tended to complicate the operation to designate symbols such as the Japanese hiragana writing symbols and katakana writing symbols. Among them, Japanese “” required five pushes on an input key for input thereof. In the portable terminals, therefore, the operation to input symbols became cumbersome works in certain cases.
In order to solve the above problem, there were a variety of proposals heretofore.
For example, concerning the touch type keys, there is a disclosed technology of displaying a plurality of symbols on a key top displayed on a screen and designating a symbol by sliding a pen on the key 2003-15808). This is an example of the technology so called “softkey”, “software key”, “software keyboard”, and so on. In this conventional technology, a plurality of key pictures are displayed on the display screen of an electronics device and a user performs an operation as if to “push” a picture out of them, thereby inputting a symbol of that key.
There was another technology about input apparatus in a portable terminal in which number buttons and a direction button (up, down, left, right, and center) are spaced from each other (e.g., cf. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-15805). In this conventional technology, a “line group” (the  line group, the  line group, etc.) of the “hiragana writing symbols” is selected by a push of a number button, and a symbol in the selected “line group” is designated by a push of the direction button.
It is described that the number of symbol input operations can be decreased by each of the above-described conventional technologies.